The United States Postal Service (USPS) was hoping to axe Saturday mail deliveries in an attempt to save money, but Congress isn't having it.

USPS announced today that the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service met yesterday to talk about the Continuing Resolution for government funding. However, Congress didn't approve the new national delivery schedule.

The new national delivery schedule consisted of package deliveries Monday through Saturday and mail deliveries Monday through Friday starting August 5, 2013.

"Although disappointed with this Congressional action, the Board will follow the law and has directed the Postal Service to delay implementation of its new delivery schedule until legislation is passed that provides the Postal Service with the authority to implement a financially appropriate and responsible delivery schedule," said USPS.

"The Board believes that Congress has left it with no choice but to delay this implementation at this time. The Board also wants to ensure that customers of the Postal Service are not unduly burdened by ongoing uncertainties and are able to adjust their business plans accordingly."

Back in February of this year, USPS announced its plan to cut Saturday mail delivery to only five days per week (eliminating Saturday). It said this would save USPS about $2 billion annually.

For fiscal 2012, USPS saw a net loss of $15.9 billion (three times the loss record one year previous).

USPS has been in a financial decline mainly because of digital mail options, such a electronic letters, bills, etc. This eliminates costs of stamps and shipping charges.

Technology is taking over, and the issue is that USPS can't keep up. In January, it was reported that USPS wanted to be more digital-friendly by working on a digital platform called MyPost, which will allow customers to log in and view all packages that they'll be receiving as well as those they've already received instead of searching several different sites that the packages may be coming from.

However, Paul Vogel, president of digital solutions at USPS, revealed that his office is like "a San Jose startup," with only 15 Android/Apple developers, consultants coming and going, one computer and his BlackBerry smartphone. Technological restrictions make upgrading hard to come by.

That's a whole different problem. Unions, like lobbying and political parties, should be made illegal. Vast amounts of our social problems would just evaporate.

Also, I have family that has worked for UPS for a long time...and I've shipped lots of stuff with FedEx too.

UPS family advises strongly not to ship things like computers with UPS...because they'll get destroyed. Indeed, I have had several computers shipped with UPS get destroyed in transit - despite having "the best packaging we've seen", I'm told, as they cut me a check for damages.

Same thing with FedEx. Many destroyed computers - each one with FedEx admitting responsibility, and paying me for them.

The fact of the matter is that *all* shippers treat their packages very roughly, and all of them destroy stuff. Doesn't matter who you ship something with, or how well you pack it - you'd better have insurance on it, because there's always a very good chance it's going to get clobbered.

People like blaming Unions, guess what unions are responsible for decent living wages, sensible working hours, paid overtime, paid or subsidized healthcare, and a host of other things that everyone takes for granted when they are employed but just because the politicians like to use unions as scapegoats for problems the politicians cause, unions become demonized for things that they don't control.

Stop blaming the unions, and instead blame the politicians, that corporations have in their pockets. The powerful and the rich (i.e. corporations) have bankrolled many of these politicians into making unions the scapegoats. The unions have helped given the middle class people of this country a way to offset the power of the rich corporate elite that with a weakening of the unions also means eroding the middle-class of this country.

If you're for removing unions and against the middle class, then you're for the rich fat corporate elites that control a lot of the politicians and even in the judicial system.

I understand that FEDEX, UPS, DHL damage packages it happens, but USPS rate of damage compared to them is so bad that foreign carriers refused to carry our mail containing lithium batteries until we could comply with the safety regulations. Other postal services had no problems getting into compliance. Several changes have happened in the past few months in order partially restore service. We can now receive incoming.

I agree, you should always have insurance on high value items. I've dealt with UPS, and DHL with regards to damaged shipments. They are by far much easier to deal with than the USPS. Odds are you'll get your money back too. USPS, will drag it out and try to only pay you a deprecate value.

Theft is also very rampant in the USPS. They lost so much money on APO's alone from damage and missing claims. Everything that comes in now is double bagged. They can no longer use the plastic flatyarn bags alone bc thieves can see whats in the bag, snip the sec tab and help themselves. The outer bag is now those orange opaque ones.

Also, gamestop, amazon, and newegg changed the boxes and label descriptors on APO shipments because of this.